To be exact WAV, Joseph Taylor competed in the first Folk Song Competition at a Music festival in Brigg, Lincolnshire in 1905. The Festival (but not the folk song competition) had been running for a number of years and, I understand, still runs today. The Folk Song competition in Brigg ran for only two years. The first in 1905 was in part inspired by Percy Grainger, who attended alongside Frank Kidson. Grainger returned the following year, 1906, with Lucy Broadwood who was one of the competition judges, and Taylor again competed (but didn't win outright). There were no further folk song competitions in Brigg until much more recent years. You don't make it clear which particular recordings of Taylor you are referring to,(ie the ones in 1907 or 1908?), but if you care to consult the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library catalogue you will see that no original cylinder recordings are held there (although they do have copies of them, and copies of the various Leader and Topic LPs that were issued in the 1970s and subsequently. To the best of my knowledge (and I am not 100% certain of this) the originals are held in the Percy Grainger museum in Melbourne, not in the UK.

I have seen no evidence yet that any competitions of this sort existed before the start of the twentieth century and should be surprised if they did, as I believe they may have been started in response to the push to collect traditional songs before they died out which occurred at the end of the 19th century (around the same time as the formation of the Folk Song Society in 1898). So I too would be interested to hear your evidence for the existence of such competitions "for centuries" - at least as far as traditional song in this country is concerned.